Tag: self harm

Grief without drugs and other things that can kill me

Ami Beth Cross2 Comments

I didn’t expect the pain to radiate from the depths of my memories to the core of every fiber in my body.   I’m now stuck in a time where my beloved Grandma has taken her last breath. This loss leaves me stuck between a chasm of feelings, as if my history is twisting like a tornado; grasping parts of me to take with her as she moves to the next space in time.  

Laughter comes in between swallows of sorrowful ballads escaping my mouth in the form of a symphony of debilitating pain.

 Man, she was funny without trying to be funny.  The memories of  hearing the words that she made up (don’t argue, you will not win) brings me a reprieve of sunshine.  Her use of the English language was a puzzle you just couldn’t put together.  My personal favorite Grandma George proclamation was:

It ain’t no good for nothing no how.

Because, sometimes, it just ain’t.

The smile that placates my face, reaches my eyes and pours out of my heart so loud the ocean waves can hear it.

 Joy. 

Gratitude.

 Love….for the opportunity to be touched so deeply by a woman of such simple depth and truth.

Earth shattering loss has been a large part of my journey in this life.  Some people taste it through out their lives, yet, I have had to drink it.  Its ripe nectar has been my feeding ground more times than I can count.  I’ve choked on grief; I’ve swallowed it whole just to regurgitate it long enough for it to come and find me again.  The difference with this particular guttural growl of emotions- the contrast this time– is that now I’m experiencing grief without drugs and other things that can kill me.

The darkness blares that the euphoria of drugs and alcohol could take it all away.  I could find myself floating above it, not sitting in it. 

Yesterday, I laid on my bed reaching out to anyone I knew, pleading through my text messages and voicemails, screaming into the universe that someone would hear me. 

Help!  I’m suffocating, please come save me; I haven’t done grief like this before.  The raw torture I feel from the loss of her presence on this earth is literally drowning me in my own ache and pain.  

She is gone.  

Grandpa and Grandma are now both gone. 

The Great generation of my lineage has dissipated into the muggy hot Arkansas’s air.  

The Great generation of love and comfort and family is gone.  All I have left is a bone crushing sense of loss that I have to actually – feel – cope – sit with-and all of this has to happen minus the great escape. All without the self destructive ways I’ve used to punishment myself; simply for being the one who feels. 

The magnificence of Recovery bellows loud enough for the vibrations to blare into my broken ear drums that – I don’t live there anymore!

Alcohol and drugs are dead to me now…being that…

I am strong.

I am capable.

I am woman.

If temptation comes and I begin the walk towards quitting quitting, I won’t waver. No matter the cost of feelings that explode deep inside me…

I won’t waver.

 No matter how bad it gets, I have rewritten the horrible things my head says to me that used to define me.

My made new self knows that she is, beautifully filled with feelings that touch the deepest sad parts and the lightest sun beams.  I own that. 

Right now, at this very moment, it is my time to rise.

I lift my hands in surrender and triumph.  I can and am doing this grief and loss thing without the crutch of addiction that eventually leads me down the road of passive suicide, slowly killing myself with the wreckage that addiction offers.

I throw stones in the face of the very thing that I said goodbye to 3 years ago.

Actively participating in raw unfiltered grief, is what I’ve trained for, worked hard to face, and have built my foundation of sobriety on.

I can say goodbye with clarity in my eyes and raw emotion at my flank to the woman who helped make me a better version of myself. 

Through my choices I am claiming the power of the Next Great Generation. The rite of passage Grandma always knew that I was capable of achieving.

The Pain I can Control

Ami Beth Cross2 Comments

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With an array of stunning colors exploding from the small of her wrist to the top of her shoulder I was left staring at a random stranger’s arm in the grocery store.  

Vivid blues met a stunning red sunset, with the peak of a storm followed by a grey outbreak of a lightning blaze.  After gawking for far too long, she met my eyes and silently asked me, why are you staring at me?

Breaking the uncomfortable silence, I proclaimed, “I love your ink.”  

A smile overtook her once strained face and then she responded, “why thank you.”

The tension subsided and all that is left is two middle-aged women in the produce department chuckling.  I proceeded, “tell me the story of your tattoo.”

She glistened with pride and love as she drifted off in a deeply moving memory.  

“It is the story of my life, my loss, and the fact that I eventually will prevail, thanks to God’s grace.”

Amen, sister.  

“Indeed, you will.”  Is all I had to say.

Engaged to the point I didn’t even realize there were annoyed people trying to get by us in route to the perfect broccoli head, we moved out of the way of the busy supermarket.

She continued, “I live with chronic pain.  Every day I ache all over no matter what medicine I am given, it doesn’t touch the pain.”

I’m brought to my knees by her words, as I have also experienced pain in my life. Although, my pain was embodied deep inside the fibers of my being. A Celtic knot hosting itself inside my heart muscle.

I pointed to the inner part of her upper arm, where a bright orange and yellow monarch butterfly transcend time, and yes, pain.  “I love this.”  I touched the butterfly and goosebumps immediately encompassed my entire body.  “Yet, I’ve heard that this part is the most painful to tattoo.” I smiled at her and stared deeply into her stunning green eyes.

“I don’t mind because it is a pain that I can control.”  Her magnificent glance drifted as her hand reached the inner part of her arm where the butterfly was in flight.  “My pain I didn’t choose.  But the burning of the tattoo gun is something that produces beauty when it’s all said and done.  And that I can control.”

My chance meeting with this woman greeted me with a revelation that truly shook me to my core.  Although I do not live with chronic physical pain, I do live with chronic emotional agony, that haunts me from my past.

Dreams when I’m sleeping often leave me shaking, terrified, and restless.  
They identify as a horror film replaying in my mind as my body tries to sleep.  Vivid recreations of hands on me and lashes carried out that I did not deserve.  There are times I wake up in the morning depleted; never wanting to fall into the trances of sleep for fear of what nightmare may await me.  So in my waking hours, it seems fitting to give myself what I think I deserve to be punished for.  Yes, I inflict pain on myself, much like the burning of the tattoo gun, I try to engrave on my being a picture of something that can make sense of it all.  A pain, that I, in fact, can control.

But why do we do this to ourselves?

  • We cut our own flesh with a razor blade
  • Force a finger down our throats to vomit up the food we just ate
  • We drink too much
  • Take drugs
  • We lie, steal, and cheat
  • Spend money we don’t have
  • We smoke
  • Starve our bodies of food in fear we are fat
  • We blow up in anger when a trigger point is pushed
  • Commit adultery
  • We run ourselves ragged trying to prove that we are in fact good enough

We are broken inside so the immediate response is to inflict on our bodies and minds, the pain we think we can control.  

In my personal journey, I know these coping mechanism all too well.  It is hard to give myself love and grace when I fail daily to love and embrace me. It feels all too ordinary to punch myself in the face, instead of accepting that as a human I will fail, and God loves me NO MATTER WHAT.  He doesn’t desire pain for me, all he wants is me.

All God wants is all of us, encompassing our turmoil and the spinning thoughts of failure that blare through our hearts and minds.  As a matter of fact, He actually tells us that He will take those failures and pain from us and turn it into Gold.  He will release the burden of it all, and allow us to transform into the monarch that we were predestined to become. Broken, bleeding, depleted, drugged, drunk, too skinny, too fat, He doesn’t care.  He says in His Word that He has written our names in the palm of His hand and calls us beloved.

For, in inflicting a self-deprecating way of dealing with our demons, we push the love of Jesus further and further away. We allow the enemy to perpetuate our painful memories, as he tries to belittle our self-worth.  If we hurt our bodies and minds, due to past trauma, then the serpent wins and God’s love is left at the back door.

Fight the good fight and accept love. Give the pain you cannot control to our God who begs us to release it all into the black of night, for He is willing to take it on so we don’t have to.  That my friends is the gift of true and exquisite love. Breathe it in like incense.  Free yourself into the beauty that I experienced gazing upon the tattoo that day in the grocery store.  A story told with magnificent storm clouds transforming into the butterfly fluttering off into the alive and awe inspiring sunset.